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Synopsis:
Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future.
Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them.
The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android.
The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses’ advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves.
But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.
A near-future thriller about the nature of consciousness, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea is a dazzling literary debut and a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.
Review:
The debut novel by Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea, is an exploration on the future of the world if AI continuous to develop, if the oceans are dredged until every living creature is fished to near extinction, and if corporations still control everything. The main story is about Dr. Ha Nguyen and her appointment to an island to study a colony of octopus and possibly a sea monster. She is met there by the only AI driven humanoid, created by the DIANIMA corporation before it was outlawed due to it’s creepiness. The two of them work together to dive in the ocean, film and study the movements of the octopus colony. They decide that they are trying to communicate and figuring out their language to communicate back becomes their only mission.
Some of this novel moves fast, and even at 450 pages, I am glad that the novel goes by quick and that there is not really a great deal of depth to bog me down. The story is interesting in the way alien stories are interesting. Those first contact stories where the people and the aliens try to communicate (I kept thinking about the movie Arrival the whole time I was reading this), and there are similarities between species that wants to communicate with you in the ocean and a species that wants to communicate with you in outer space. The eerie feeling is that there is danger in work that is being done, that if the characters do find out what the other species is trying to say, they will learn something they never wanted to learn. This is a compelling concept and it does give this story tension, especially since it is established early in the novel that these octopus can easily kill someone without an ounce of remorse.
Some of the topics addressed in this novel are also topics that we will have to explore in the near future, like the acceptance of AI, and what happens when it becomes so good that they are running the corporations without humans, the fishing boats without an override, and when things go wrong, AI does not understand that there has to be an alternative plan. Questions like what it means to be a human, and if AI continues to advance, when will the line be erased between computers returning information and an actual consciousness? What can we learn from studying animals that will be beneficial to the way that we live our future lives, and will anyone listen? And how can we do anything under the shadow of corporations who own everything, including the oceans, the land, and most of the people living on them? There is a feeling of impending doom throughout the novel The Mountain in the Sea, but the doom is not for just the characters in the story but for us, as humans, and for the world that we live in.
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